Oil prices continue to rise in part because the demand for oil continues to grow, while stable sources of oil are becoming scarcer. Oil companies continue to develop new tools for generating data from boreholes with the hope of leveraging such data by converting it into meaningful information that may lead to improved production, reduced costs, and/or streamlined operations.
Borehole imagery is a major component of the wireline business (for example, Schlumberger's FMI™, OBMI™, and Ultrasonic Borehole Imager UBI™ Tools), and an increasing part of the logging while drilling business (for example, Schlumberger's GeoVision™, EcoScope™, and MicroScope™ tools). While borehole imagery provides measurements containing abundant data about the subsurface, it remains a challenge to extract the geological and petrophysical knowledge contained therein.
Knowledge of the curvature of individual subsurface layers may provide useful information to geophysicists. For example, correlation of curvature to fracture density, local tectonic strain or other borehole data may provide useful input in well stimulation design. Curvature analysis may be performed from 2D models of the subsurface, wherein curvature radius of layers may be estimated based on a cross section built from borehole dip information such as obtained from borehole imagery. However, 2D cross sections may have drawbacks such as not being appropriately oriented for capturing the maximum curvature of multiple subsurface structures.